Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
Rob Hawk founded The Magic City Big Band in Birmingham two years ago.
For 31 years, Rob Hawk’s office was the cockpit of a Delta Air Lines jet. The Hoover resident flew through lightning strikes and at least one engine fire indication over the course of his career, the kind of moments most people would call harrowing. Hawk, ever understated, waves them off as simply part of the job. These days, at 71, his stage is considerably smaller and a good deal louder in a different way: he sits behind a drum kit, keeping time for the 24 musicians of the Magic City Big Band, a swing ensemble he started from scratch two years ago.
Hawk grew up playing drums, picking the instrument up in school and carrying it with him through decades of adult life, including years spent playing in a community band back in Atlanta. When he retired from Delta and relocated to the Birmingham area five years ago, settling near Valleydale, he expected to find a big band scene similar to the one he had enjoyed in Atlanta.
Photo by Karim Shamsi-Basha.
Rob Hawk and his wife, Alison, live in Hoover.
He did not find one.
“I enjoyed playing big band music in Atlanta, and when I got here, I couldn’t find anything like it,” Hawk said. So instead of giving up on the idea, he started talking to people, including bassist Joey Hall, and the two began building a band from the ground up.
What started as a handful of musicians who found each other in different ways has grown, in just two years, into a 24-piece big band.
“The drummer and the bass player are the foundation of a band like this,” Hawk said. “Everything else is built on top of that.”
That foundation includes Hall, 61, who brings his own long and winding musical history to the group. A graduate of Huffman High School, Hall started playing music in the fifth grade and stuck with the tuba until he was 30 years old, when he shifted to guitar through his church. Today he anchors the Magic City Big Band on bass guitar. By day, Hall works as the manager of simulation operations at a school of nursing, overseeing the kind of hands-on training simulations that prepare future nurses for real-world scenarios. By night and on weekends, he is laying down the low end for a band built on 1940s-style swing.
Photos courtesy of Rob Hawk.
The Magic City Big Band is composed of dedicated volunteers.
The Magic City Big Band’s sound draws directly from the Glenn Miller era: full horn sections, a driving rhythm section and the triplet-based swing feel that defines the genre. It is music built for dancing, built for joy, and built, the members said, to be shared.
“We play for people, and we want to bring them joy,” Hawk said. “We want the band to have a good time doing it too.”
That philosophy extends to how Hawk leads. Rehearsals are held weekly, most weeks, at Wilson Chapel United Methodist Church in Roebuck, and Hawk said the culture he has tried to build is one of encouragement rather than pressure.
“There’s no pressure if you mess up,” he said. “We don’t single out players. We don’t beat anybody over the head about it. People show up ready to play, and they rehearse on their own time. That’s enough.”
The result, Hawk said, is a band that has come together faster and sounded better than he expected this early in its life.
“What pleases me is how good the band sounds already, and how quickly we got there,” he said.
The Magic City Big Band has already played a variety of venues around the Birmingham area since its founding, including the Inverness Country Club and a benefit concert for the Rosedale Food Pantry, along with performances at senior living communities near Valleydale. The band keeps a steady stream of gigs on the calendar, booking roughly one performance a month, and has a busy stretch of dates coming up. The band is scheduled to play a Family Fun Day event at the Hoover Met on Sept. 12, a benefit concert for spina bifida on Nov. 15, and the SoHo Plaza Christmas concert in Homewood on Dec. 12.
Photos courtesy of Rob Hawk.
The Magic City Big Band is composed of dedicated volunteers.
Last year’s November benefit concert nearly did not happen for everyone on time. According to Hall, at least one member of the band was at an Alabama football game last November and had to leave before the final whistle in order to make it back in time to perform at the spina bifida benefit. It is the kind of commitment, Hall said, that says as much about the band’s culture as any rehearsal could.
Hall also pointed to bandmate Ephraim Nunnelly, who plays trombone and bass for the group, as an example of the range of musicianship the band has attracted as word has spread.
For Hawk, the band’s rapid growth, from a conversation with one friend to two dozen musicians in two years, has as much to do with hunger for this kind of music as it does with any one person’s effort.
“We’re going great,” Hall said. “We’re gigging a bit every month, and it keeps growing.”
Both men said the band is always looking for new players, particularly as its calendar of public performances continues to fill up through the end of the year. For Hawk, who spent three decades keeping passengers safe at 35,000 feet, the Magic City Big Band represents a different kind of steady hand: one that keeps a room full of dancers and a horn section full of musicians, moving together in time.
“Making music with all my friends,” Hawk said. “And we do get down!”
